The Frog Prince
by quotidienne
Summary: Once upon a very long time ago, a boy wished for a happy ending. Whether or not he got one is debatable.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: **I just own an imagination, a word-processor, and a bit of time.

**General Warnings**: This fic will be consistent with the current manga chapters. If you're nowhere near 370, and you like your character's secrets revealed in all good time, well, maybe you shouldn't be reading this. While actual plot won't be spoiled, back-story sure as hell will be.

**The Frog Prince**

(Not exactly a fairy-tale.)

Prologue

_He remembers three things by the time he is able to sit and__ think, by the time he is out of that very long dark place and can see the sky again._

_One: he had not always been this cold._

_Two: there were once people with him, people who kept him warm and gave him food and surrounded him with things.__Bright, colorful things that did not break even when he threw them._

(_A word comes back to him: _boat.)

_Three: there used to be a lot of people and a lot of houses and a lot __of__ sound.__ He went to _school.

_He sits down to remember and he sees a lot of black and feels a lot of cold, even through the thickly padded blue woolen clothes the lady with long hair _mommy_ put on him a while ago._

_A while ago?__ He does not remember how long he has been sitting here, looking at many trees and, squinting, seeing a lot of flat ground and a lot of black and __hearing a lot of quiet. His stomach hurts, and he tries nibbling at the red things on the bushes next to him ,the ones he saw the little brown thing with long teeth eating before (another word: _squirrel_, said __skwrel__) and it had eaten a lot and usually when people eat a lot they are very hungry and the food is very good._

_Mommy used to be happy when I ate a lot_? Mommy always said to wait quietly and not cry when she is home late. Mommy said _busy_, put a key around his neck and said, _wait, wait_.

_He is waiting. He touches the place around his neck, under his clothes, where a small bronze key dangles from the end of a white string severely knotted in a loop._

_He eats as many red circles as he can find and some of them leave red stains on his blue outfit. His stomach seizes so he licks at the spots until the red turns grey, and then he feels a bit better._

_When he is tired—overwhelmed, he sleeps._

---

The small villages dotting the edges of the Greater Countries had their own unique cultures and laws and rules and differed greatly in many ways from each other, especially as they carefully crafted lives specially suited to those who struggled to live between vicious enemies bend on destruction and domination. However, despite the hours their inhabitants worked and the number of children with consistently occupied parents, a well known legend that frightened the otherwise stoic villagers living outside ninja protection prevented them from ever leaving their children alone for _too_ long.

_Out in the woods i__t was said that if you leave a young child__ alone fo__r too long, he will lose himself and become a changeling, a demon, and you can't ever get him back. _

The villagers were right to be frightened; after all, it had happened before.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** And there you have it, the first chapter of "The Frog Prince." For all of you who're caught up with current Naruto manga-canon, you know exactly what inspired this (or maybe you don't, I'm not that bad at being subtle, you're wondering when I'll give you an answer and, seriously, next chapter—promise). I originally was going to write this as a series of quick one-shorts (and it still might turn out that way eventually!), but Kishimoto you _screw with my head_. 

This is still further down on the list than SPEEDOMETER and my upcoming Fafner fic, but depending on what happens next in the manga and reader response, that might change.


	2. Part One Chapter One

**Disclaimer: **I just own an imagination, a word-processor, and a bit of time.

**The Frog Prince**

(Not exactly a fairy-tale.)

Part One: Chapter One

When they found him, brown hair covered half his face and rough chunks of it flopped over the rest of his head which was kept low to the ground along with his center of gravity. He crawled along the underbrush, carefully eyeing the rabbit that was nibbling at a patch of grass two trees away. The frogs, having stopped to watch on their way down to the springs, nudged each other, trying not to laugh at the ragged little figure with thin, outstretched arms crawling around rocks like a spider, but they didn't really need to call attention to themselves and further confuse another poor human who wandered through these desolate parts of the Myouboku Mountains, alerting ignorant villagers to the presence of _intelligent_ amphibians. There were enough rumors about the "toad demons" who governed the tops of the mountains (not that they minded the isolation, but even a toad could get sick of being called a demon. They were _much_ better looking than _that_).

Then the human both lifted and shook his head, a jerky gesture, so that patches of hair weren't falling into his face, so that they saw his eyes.

The lot of toad quickly scuttled down the rocky slope to the springs, following the trail leading far away from the human with inhuman eyes, the boy who looked like an animal. And even if no one said anything the whole way there, no one forgot the cold dead look in flat eyes that just might have seen the grey-green group, however far away and well hid they were at the time.

And, even if no one admitted it, they were all _terrified_.

--

For a while, the five toads who had gathered together for their weekly trip to the springs a few miles away from the village remembered the boy they had seen, and didn't say anything about it, preferring to think that he'd passed through the mountains and was on his way to Fire Country or somewhere equally far away. They told their friends about the strange fish they'd seen in the spring and how the water was always a bit warmer after sitting in it for an hour and how they're really like to invite them, but you know it'd been _tradition_ for the five of them—friends since graduation of Pond, the village's training school for young toads—to visit the spring every week by themselves and reminisce and not grow _too_ attached to the rest of the world and forget their old friends.

A few weeks after it first happened, as they were waiting for Gamatenkan, who was _always_ late to their assigned meeting-place, Gamachi started: "you know, whatever happened to that boy we saw?" The others froze, but Gamachi, with his back to the rest, didn't notice and continued: "he was horrible—he didn't look normal, that's for sure, and I would have been scared to go near him, but didn't he look like just a tadpole?"

Someone coughed. Gamachi, the least perceptive, took this entirely the wrong way. "I mean, I _know_ humans aren't ever tadpoles, but he just looked so much smaller than any other human we've seen. Plus, did you see that he wasn't wearing any human-clothes? Isn't that something all humans do, well, except in the water?"

Gamadekun seized on a possible change of subject. "Of course humans wear clothes. Haven't you ever been summoned before?"

"Of _course_! Do you remember Master Akihiko? I was his _eighth_ summons, you know."

"_Akihiko_?! He died _before we were even born_, idiot!"

"Oh. Then maybe not Akihiko."

Gamadekun laughed. "Oh god, you really _haven't_ been summoned before."

"I—shut up! I'm still _training_. And neither have _you_."

"I've read accounts of it!"

"It's not like we have a real master now anymore. The last one to sign the contract was Master Akihiko, you know," Gamatenkan said, trudging towards the gate. His father had been Akihiko's third summons, and one of the man's closest friends. He'd been a great ninja, and the village of Myouboku Mountain was very proud of their former chosen, but he'd died before taking on an apprentice.

Gamaten squeaked. "Do—do you think The Great Toad Sage will ever pick another master?"

"Eventually, yeah."

"_Eventually_?"

Gamahitsu sighed. "He might be getting too old. Plus, we haven't had a human-ninja find this place in decades, much less make it up the mountain. It's not even like we've been trying to hide, recently."

"Unless you count that tadpole."

The other four fell silent. Gamadekun croaked. "He's just a brat."

"He _still_ got up here."

"He couldn't possibly know who—_what_—we are. He didn't even look very human, much less like a human-ninja."

Another pause. "Shall we go?"

The rest nodded, and began following Gamadekun down the path. Gamaten, ambling at the back, leaned over and whispered messily into Gamachi's ear. "_What if we _never_ get summoned?"_

_"Toads live a long time. __Much longer than humans.__ We'll be summoned."_

_"And if not?__If we die first?"_

Gamachi's face fell, and he turned away. "_Then—we__ die with shame."_

The trip to the springs was filled with the small sounds of rocks sliding down well worn slopes.

_--_

_Hungry.__Branches too high here.__ Climb? _

The boy looked up, pushing the hair out of his eyes, shoving a leaf that had lodged there out of the way with a snarl. The leaf fell beside him and he smashed it with his palm, still carefully watching the apples nestled in clusters of browning leaves hanging on the tree before him. He knew it was too tall—he'd tried scaling trees like that before, and he'd always fallen, and falling _hurt_. Instead, he picked up a few rocks and started throwing them at the nearest branches, seeing if he could shake a few off their bough.

Plink. Plink. _Hungry._Plink. Plink. Plink. Plink.

The boy shook his head and threw the rock he'd picked up at the ground. Some of the rocks were hitting the tree, but the branch barely swayed, and when he aimed for the apple he missed completely—it was just too small a target.

_Hungry._

He picked up a bigger rock and threw it as far as he could. It _thunked_ against a tree branch (not the one he was aiming at) and he heard a crash and then a faint buzzing sound.

_Buzz. Buzz __buzz__Hungry.__Smell?__ Buzz—smell? No, no, no. _

The brunet sniffed at the air, cautiously nearing the source of the buzzing. When he brushed away a few leaves and stalks of grass, he saw a bee comb lying on the ground, split nearly in pieces. He realized that his rock must have hit this instead, and nudged the wax with the knuckles on one of his hands. It came away sticky.

He licked at his hand experimentally.

_Good_.

The honey on his hand was thick and sweet and his licked all around his fingers before attacking the rest of the comb. Some bees bit into his hand in protest, but the boy was _hungry_ and ignored the tiny pricks of pain in favor of sticking his fingertips deeper into the comb, sweeping out gallops of the honey and depositing them onto his tongue, inevitably dripping some on his chin and chest in the process.

When he finished licking the wax bits clean, he started to notice his hands and elbows stinging a bit, and tried to touch the places where he was starting to hurt, but his body was harder to move when it was covered in sticky honey. He licked his lips.

_Water._

He'd noticed the sound of trickling water a long while ago, and so he closed his eyes as to more easily find it, slowly breathing in and out, carefully trying to forget about the sparking pain in his hands. Then he heard it—soft flows characterizing streams and pools and _water_.

He took one last look at the honey comb and scrabbled away, down the steep slopes of the mountain, fingers pressing into the dirt.

_Water._

--

The spring was recessed slightly into the mountain's side—sunken in at the bottom of the mountain with only a small side of level ground allowing for the path the toads took every weekend they visited.

"Mmm, I love coming here."

"Gamahitsu, you say that _every time_. We know. 'The water is nice and cold, but not too cold.'"

"You forgot quiet. It's quiet here too. Not like by the ocean."

"It's not going to stay quiet if you keep _yabbering_," Gamadekun growled, slowly lowering his toes into the water. The other had already leaped in—it was a fairly deep pool—but Gamadekun preferred to take his time, inching in bit by bit.

"Hmmph. Someone's in a bad mood." Gamahitsu took a deep breath and began lazily swimming in small circles underwater, right next to where Gamachi was scratching his head with a wooden brush he'd brought along. Gamachi sighed and was lulled into relaxation by listening to the swishing of the bristles against his head and the way it tickled and made him shiver sometimes and the soft background sounds of rocks and dirt being dislodged, sounding nothing like the usual streaming of water in and out of the spring…

_Huh?_

Gamadekun beat him to it, though, and even as his eyes narrowed the other toad growled. "Did you hear that?"

Gamachi nodded, but Gamadekun wasn't looking—instead, he was watching the side furthest away from the path they'd taken—the side of the pool most deeply cut into the side of the mountain. Gamachi following his eyes and watched and listened.

When a pale creature emerged from the bushes and practically dug his hands into the ground to stop from falling down the steep sloping drop above the pool, Gamachi thought later that he almost wasn't surprised enough at all.

Almost—but that was later. The _thing_ looked up and hair parted to reveal dead eyes and an expressionless face smeared with dirt and blood and the group made eye contact.

Gamachi prided himself on the fact that Gamadekun was the first to look away.

--

The boy had ignored them and proceeded to try to lower himself to where the water was (_not the brightest,_ Gamadekun had murmured later, _he should have taken the path_). He made it halfway down before slipping—having grabbed onto a big rock that wouldn't sustain his weight—and the toads winced as they watched him fall, scrabbling with a wide look on his face and Gamachi wanted to catch him but suddenly the boy was on the floor, stomach up, and the ringing smack of flesh against rock echoing along the walls. The boy shook his head, small rivulets of blood dribbling down his arms, and looked up towards the water. Gamachi took the opportunity to look at the boy's eyes again—the way they were flat and cold and uncomprehending, and watched the boy stretch his arm and try to push himself up and his knee was bent the wrong way in two different places and even Gamatenkan who had failed his medical training exam three times in a row could've realized that it was broken, and the toad winced and the boy bit cleanly through his lip and, lifting swollen red palms towards the water, began pulling himself towards the pool. It wasn't far, but every time his leg moved, another dribble of blood leaked out of the side of his mouth and Gamahitsu tried to move forward, the boy was sticking his face in the water and his thin cheeks were ballooned and his eyes were closed and there was blood _everywhere_ but Gamadekun held him back.

_"Look we don't know if he's safe."_

Gamachi felt a bit hysterical, watching.

"_He's a little human—a tadpole! He couldn't hurt any one of us," _Gamahitsu replied.

_"T—that's true. "_

_"He's also hurt—you saw his fall. His leg is definitely broken. He's not wearing any clothes, he's so thin—winter's coming up, how can we leave him alone with a broken leg? And did you see his hands? It looks like they're infected or something."_

_"He might be tricking us—maybe he wants to get a hold of the clan secrets."_

_"He wouldn't be ignoring us then."_

There was so much blood. Gamachi was sure that he wasn't the only one who noticed that the boy was moving more sluggishly than before.

_"Maybe he knows he couldn't beat us in a fight and is looking for pity instead?"_

_"FOR WARTS' SAKES LOOK AT HIM.__ He looks like a little tadpole that's barely made it out of a nightmare alive. How long do you think he's been wandering around like this, all alone? __Weeks?__Months?"_

_"I still don't think—"_

Gamachi shoved the arguing pair out of his way, throat gagging. "Shut up. I'm going to heal him."

"_Gamachi_!"

"I'm a _medic_. This is my _job_. Even if he was a ninja-human, or a spy-human, he'd still be _my responsibility."_

"But Gamachi—"

"Gamahitsu was right. The boy is _bleeding to death_, he's got a fractured leg, he's severely malnourished—and this is all just from a superficial diagnosis. I haven't even _touched_ on those weird scars he has or his swollen palms."

"_Gamachi_. It's not _safe_. We should ask the Council first."

"Just to _see_ them would take weeks, you know that. Look, Gamadekun—I know that you want to be cautious, but the boy is going to die _right in front of us_ if we don't do something. If it makes you feel any better, once he's healed you can knock him out and we'll take him up the mountain that way."

"I—well—"

"_Gamadekun_."

"—go then. And. D-don't let him die."

Gamachi smiled grimly. "I'll try."

--

_What do you remember?_

Cold eyes blinked slowly, uncomprehendingly. His mouth opened exaggeratedly and tried, f_ire. __Big hot fire._

_When?_

_Before._

_Before what?_

_Cold.__ Warm. __Before._

_When? How long? Do you remember time? _A pause. _Sh__, it's ok, don't, don't do that. Stop. Your wrists are already bloody don't—DON'T! __Gamadai__, hold his HANDS DOWN!_

* * *

**Author's Notes: **This chapter took a bit longer to post than I'd have liked, but I was waiting to make sure it really _would_ be canon-compliant. Please _do_ take a bit of time to tell me what you think… 


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